Stripping eggs from large mole crabs ( <i>Emerita</i> spp.): a feeding strategy in migratory Whimbrels ( <i>Numenius hudsonicus</i> ) and breeding American Oystercatchers ( <i>Haematopus palliatus</i> )
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Many shorebirds experience digestive bottlenecks, where they can intake energy at faster rates than they can process it, which forces individuals to take digestive pauses during foraging. Some individuals selectively strip soft-bodied parts of invertebrate prey and leave the exoskeleton uneaten to increase prey digestibility. Here we describe migratory Whimbrels (Numenius hudsonicus) in Oregon, USA, and breeding American Oystercatchers (Haematopus palliatus) in Virginia, USA, stripping and eating eggs from mole crabs (Emerita spp.), and explore the relationship between size of the prey and this behavior. We also examined the prevalence of egg stripping in American Oystercatchers and whether it was associated with diet. We lacked data to examine the prevalence of egg stripping in Whimbrels (n = 41 Pacific mole crabs [Emerita analoga]). About 10% of Atlantic mole crabs (Emerita talpoida; n = 554) had their eggs stripped by 11 American Oystercatchers. Both American Oystercatchers and Whimbrels targeted larger mole crabs for egg stripping. Egg stripping did not significantly increase prey handling time for American Oystercatchers, nor was it associated with diet specialization. The low prevalence of egg stripping might be explained by individual prey preferences or the satiation state of individuals. Future research could identify the satiation point at which American Oystercatchers switch from ingesting mole crabs whole to stripping the eggs from mole crabs. Whimbrels and American Oystercatchers appear to follow the digestive rate model of foraging, where they minimize cumulative foraging time by selecting easily digestible mole crab eggs. Highly digestible and nutrient-rich mole crab eggs may help to drive energetically intensive migratory and breeding behaviors in shorebirds.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".